


Something Good

by ScribeShan



Category: Scorpion (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, Gen, One Shot, Post-2x24, Quintis - Freeform, Tumblr Ask Box Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2016-08-15
Packaged: 2018-08-08 21:20:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7773796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScribeShan/pseuds/ScribeShan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Forgiveness is rooted in compassion. Post Season 2. </p><p>One-shot, completely separate from The Curtis Method, despite the fact that they cover the same time period.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Good

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Maggiemaye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maggiemaye/gifts).



> So, I've been working hard on the mapping for Part 2 of The Curtis Method and I needed a distraction. I reblogged a fic prompt with flowers and their meanings (https://scribeshan.tumblr.com/post/148761603977/flowers-and-prompts) from Maggiemaye, and offered to take asks. She sent me one! She chose Quintis and elder, which means compassion. 
> 
> Here you go, Maggiemaye. I hope you love it. I think I’m stuck in a permanent post-season 2 angsty place, so I hope you’re not tired of that yet. This was the best of my ideas. Enjoy!
> 
> Follow me on tumblr at @scribeshan.

There’s a certain post-case giddiness that descends over the team when they’ve had a close call, at least there had been, until lately. Close calls had been in plentiful supply in the weeks since they’d gotten Toby back from Collins, since the engagement that wasn’t, since the profession of love in Tahoe that was not joyfully accepted. Revelations of who and why gave way to shouting matches. Shouting matches gave way to refusals to speak. Refusals to speak gave way to icy silences that Toby and Paige each staunchly reinforced at every opportunity. So despite their recent close calls, lightheartedness had been in short supply. That is, until today. 

They’d been in a department store warehouse when the explosion occurred. Walter, Toby, Cabe, Tim and Happy has been inside. The sound sent Paige and Sylvester running for the building, but before they could even reach the smoke, they heard the coughs of moans of the team through the coms as they checked on each other. And then, it happened.

Walter coughed harshly, still flat on his back where the blast had thrown him. “Okay,” he groaned, pushing himself to a sitting position, “That didn’t work out too we— _AAAAAAH! Toby?!?_ ”

“ _Walter?_ ” Paige shouted over the coms. She heard Toby shouting for him, too, then heard him dissolve into uncontrollable laughter. 

“For God’s sake, 197, it’s a mannequin arm!”

“You were standing right next to me; I thought it was one of _yours_!” Walter stumbled to his feet and toward the exit, casting a horrified look back at the singed mannequin part on the floor, shuddering at the eerie memory of seeing it across his own leg.

“Not unless I had an extra that I never noticed,” Toby said as the group piled into the alley toward Paige and Sylvester, taking deep breaths now that they were out of the smoke. Toby held his arms in front of him. “One, two. Although, it would almost be worth it to hear you scream like that again.” 

“I did not scream.” 

“Actually, I may have it on the audio,” Sylvester volunteered.

“Then what the hell are you standing here for?” Toby hopped in place. “Go, go!” Sylvester scurried toward the van.

“I DID. NOT. SCREAM,” Walter bit out.

“Yeah, we’ll just see about that when we hear the tape,” Toby said, backing down the alley.

He stopped at the rear bumper of the van, where Happy was wordlessly loading their equipment.

“Happy,” he said softly.

She spun around, face slack with surprise that he’d addressed her voluntarily.

“Sorry. You hadn’t said much,” he shrugged. “I just wanted to make sure you were hearing me OK. That,” he gestured back to the warehouse, “was pretty loud.”

Happy blinked, looked toward the warehouse, then back to Toby. “Fine,” she forced past her lips, breaking her near-complete silence of the last couple of weeks. “My ears are ringing a little.”

“Mine too,” Toby said, and took a step closer. “Are you dizzy? Do you need me to—”

Happy shook her head, then regretted it, as it halted his forward progress. “I don’t think it’s anything to worry about.”

“Good,” Toby said. He stepped around the bumper and down the alley.

“Where are you going?”

“Find my hat,” he said, and it seemed like far too few words for her Toby. Then again, she supposed, he really wasn’t _her_ Toby anymore.

“It came off when we were on top of the freight truck,” she supplied, feeling helpless.

He nodded.

“Need some help?”

“I’ve got it,” he said. There was no malice in it, no anger. She’d been OK the first couple of days, when he was shouting at her, but this? It was like they were strangers.

He found the hat near the entrance to the alley, teetering against a utility pole. He snatched it from the ground, revealing a small patch of white flowers that had taken root in a crack in the asphalt. 

“Sambucus,” he mumbled to himself. He stared at the cheerful white blooms for a moment, then looked at Happy, still working at the van’s back bumper at the other end of the alley. He looked back at the flowers, then shook his head to himself. “That’s really stupid,” he muttered, raising the hat to his head. He was stopped by the sight of one of the blossoms stuck to the band of his hat. He brushed it away, looked back down at the flowers, then at the hat in his hand again. “Okay,” he mumbled. “In all our years together, you’ve never led me astray.” 

Happy closed the doors to the van a few seconds later and nearly jumped to see Toby standing there. “I…um…see you found it.”

“Yeah,” he kept his eyes downcast. “Here.”

She felt his hand poke her torso, and she looked down to see him holding a sprig of white flowers. “What?”

“Here. These are for you.”

Happy gingerly took the stem between her fingers. “Where did you get these?”

“They were growing by the…thing.” He gestured over his shoulder, refusing to meet her eyes.

“What thing?” Happy looked down the alley. “The utility pole?”

“Yeah.”

“I…you’re giving me a _weed_?”

“It’s not a weed,” Toby said. “Don’t you know your flowering herbs?”

“Does anyone but you?”

“It’s elderflower,” Sylvester supplied from behind her. 

Happy swiveled back and forth between Sylvester and Toby. “So…am I supposed to cook with it, or roll it up and smoke it?”

“I’d recommend against both,” Toby said. “The berries have been used medicinally for centuries, but the rest of the plant is fairly toxic.”

“You gave me a poisonous herb?” Happy squinted. “That’s a hell of a message.”

“I gave you a flower,” Toby said. “Different types of flowers have meaning when given as gifts.”

Happy looked down at the tiny blooms, which seemed to do a little dance for her in the breeze. “And what do these mean?”

“I’m not doing all the work for you, Happy,” Toby stepped around her and into the van. “Sly, do you have my audio?”

Happy was dimly aware of Sylvester replaying Walter’s voice from his laptop in the van, aware of the group gathering ‘round to rib Walter for startling so badly, but she couldn’t tear her eyes off the flowers in her hand.

“Did Sly say they were called elderflower?” Paige said, and only then did Happy realize that she was standing behind her, tapping furiously on her phone’s screen.

“Yeah,” Happy said.

Paige went still. “You’re sure?”

“Yeah.”

Paige’s features softened. “Happy…” she turned the phone toward her.

“Compassion,” Happy read. “Elder symbolizes compassion.”

Paige smiled, nodded.

Happy looked down at the flowers in her hands. “What does that mean?” she looked up at Paige, bordering on desperation. “Paige, what does that mean? Does he mean that everything’s ok? That it will be? That we’re still friends, what?”

“I don’t know,” Paige said. “He’ll tell you when he’s ready. But it’s something good, Happy. It means something good.”

Happy looked down at her gift again and found herself fighting tears, a sensation she’d gotten used to in the past few weeks. “What do I do? Do I just…say thank you? We’ve barely spoken, I don’t even —”

“Just…give me the keys. I’ll drive. You go sit with him.”

When Happy approached the sliding door to the van, Sly was replaying the audio for the umpteenth time at Toby’s request.

_‘…we—AAAAAAH! Toby?!?’_

Toby cackled maniacally. 

“I loathe you,” Walter ground out from the front seat.

“I know,” Toby said. “That just makes it better.”

“This seat taken?” Happy asked quietly.

Toby’s eyebrows shot up. “Taken by you, if you want.”

She sat down, feeling awkward, not knowing what else to say. She stared at the flowers in her hands.

“Maestro?” Toby called.

Sylvester grinned and played the audio again, met by Toby’s hysterical laughter. Happy hated when he was like this, usually, but damn, it was good to hear him laugh again. To hear all of them laughing again. Well, all of them except Walter.

“Walter, I’m gonna make that my ringtone,” Toby howled. “It’ll give me a reason to look forward to your calls, for a change.”

When they arrived back at the garage, everyone filed out of the van, awash in the relief of long overdue post-case giddiness. Toby extended his leg to silently keep Happy from climbing over him, and waited until they were alone in the van. They both stared wordlessly at the flowers she spun between her fingers.

Subtly, Toby scooted closer, so they were touching from shoulder to knee. “I’m going to take a stab a something, and when I do, I don’t want you to say, ‘don’t shrink me.’ I just want you to answer the question.”

Happy nodded.

“Is this the first time anyone has ever given you flowers?”

Happy pressed her lips together and nodded again.

Toby drew a hand down his face. “Well, hell, Sweet Pea, if I’d known that I would have done it years ago. I always thought you’d think they were stupid.”

“I would have,” Happy said. “You couldn’t win with me, Toby, I’m 100% hard ass. But…I like these, though. I like…I think I like flowers. Getting flowers. Sometimes,” she said, voice shaking a little, “Sometimes, I’m wrong.”

Toby looked out the window, heaved a long sigh before quietly agreeing. “Yes, you are.”

Happy nodded, stinging at the condemnation. “Toby, I…appreciate these. But I’m not sure what you mean by them.”

“I have never been so hurt or pissed off at anyone in my life,” Toby said, never taking his eyes from the window. “And that is really saying something. I have dismissed all your attempts at apology or explanation, because there was simply nothing you could say to make me find this…acceptable. Tolerable. Forgivable.” He took his hat off, spinning it slowly in his hands. “But the fact of the matter is, I love you and I can’t stop that. Believe me, in the past few weeks I’ve tried,” he laughed humorlessly. “And, it has not escaped my notice that this has been…hard…very hard on you, too. So, I have a choice about what I do next. I can hold us both in this place forever, or I can try to move forward. That…” he nodded at the flowers in her hands, “is a peace offering. Forgiveness begins with compassion. The next time you are ready to talk, I will be ready to listen.”

He climbed out of the van.

“Thanks, Toby.”

He turned around. “You understand I’m not making any guarantees, right? But it’s something.”

Happy nodded. “It is. Maybe even something good.”


End file.
